


red sky at night

by Heavenward (PreludeInZ)



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-26 01:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9856526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/Heavenward
Summary: Just a miscellaneous little bit of hurt/comfort, Gordon and Penelope and the unfortunate end of a long, hard day.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [corbyinoz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/corbyinoz/gifts).



> Just a little something I'm putting up over here, as a gift to Corby, in congratulations for finishing her masterpiece, Edge of the World <3

_Look after him,_ Virgil had said, _He's exhausted._

And maybe he is, at that.

Long day, long week, long month, and yeah, Gordon's so tired he'd barely been able to smile at her, when she'd come sauntering down the manor's front steps to give him a hug and a kiss and someone to lean against, as they'd both watched the great green bulk of TB2 lift up and away into the sky. His arm had been heavy around her shoulders. He hadn't been able to muster the energy to wave.

He's lucky that she can tell just how _done_ he is, but then, it's gotta be obvious. As his brother's Thunderbird disappears from sight, she turns into him and does that thing where she puts her hand over his heart and lays her head against his shoulder and just stays there for a long, lingering minute. That's good. That helps.

And then she takes charge, and that helps even more. "I think it's going to be straight to bed for you, darling," Penelope informs him, although it's only half past four in England, and the skies are a rare, clear blue, and it seems like he shouldn't waste any of that oh-so-precious English sunlight.

But no, fuck it, Virgil was right. Gordon's exhausted and there's just no other word for it. He's still in his blues and his blues are caked with the remnants of their last rescue, and he hadn't even noticed the way he's getting dried, crusted mud all over the pretty dress Penelope's wearing. He curses himself for being so thoughtless, but she doesn't seem to care, and before he can string together anything like an apology—for being so tired and filthy and still kinda cold and miserable and also for just showing up without a whole hell of a lot of warning—she just takes his hand and pulls him along up the stairs.

There are too many stairs in this damn house. Creighton-Ward Manor is a beautiful old place and Gordon loves coming here, but there are too many damn stairs. Pen takes him straight up the sweeping grand staircase in the entrance hall of the manor, and it seems like it takes forever to get to the top, and he has to stop for a minute when they do, just so he doesn't fall flat on his stupid blond face. Or just keel over backward and go ass-over-teakettle back down the entire flight of stairs, and not even care if he breaks his neck on the way down. It's good that Penelope's here, or that second scenario seems like it'd be a hell of a lot more likely. Her hands are steady where she puts them; one of them gentle against his chest again, while her other arm wraps around his hips.

When she looks up, he gives her a nod and she takes his hand once more, pulls him along down the hallway.

Her bedroom's all done in white carpet and he balks at the threshold, tries to tell her that he'll mess everything up, streaks of dusty dark grey grime that he's tracked all the way from Peru, where he and Virgil had spent the past sixteen hours working a landslide. He doesn't want to think about it, doesn't want to drag the remnants of that long, godawful day into her private, personal space and ruin the carpet. This place is supposed to be free of all that.

But Penelope overrules him, not that it's hard. He can barely win an argument against her on his best day, never mind one of the worst he's had in a long damn time. She shakes her head at him, and gives that chiding little sigh that she employs when he's frustrating her. "Dearest, if you think I care about the carpet in the _slightest_ , you're an absolute and utter fool. Gordon, darling. Come."

She's just like that, though, she's—it's that old money thing. By comparison, _his_ family's money is so new that it still squeaks when they spend it, only a generation old. Gordon can still remember a life where he'd catch—has _caught_ hell—for tracking mud across the carpet. Penelope will ruin a carpet like it doesn't mean anything, like she doesn't think about how someone has to come along and clean it up afterward, like she's not making more work for somebody—like _he's_ not making more work for somebody—how he's made such a damn mess already, it's so stupid. One day they're gonna have a fight about that. Not today. Another day. Later.

"Gordon," she says, and she's standing in front of him now and one of her hands has come up to cradle his jaw, her thumb stroking softly along his cheekbone. Her eyes are that perfect cornflower blue, and she's close enough that if he breathes deep enough, he can smell the lavender and jasmine of her perfume, can let the scent of her hair overpower the mildewy grey reek of mud and muck and filth and his long, awful, terrible, _godawful_ day. "Take a shower. A lovely hot shower, darling, you'll feel better. There are towels on the counter, there's a bathrobe for you in the closet. I've had it monogrammed. It was going to be a present, but never mind. Are you hungry?"

"I could eat," he answers dully, and presses his face against her hand instead of nodding. It's the first coherent thing he's managed to say. He blinks, but catches himself at it. If he closes his eyes for too long, he'll just crash right out. He'll just drop and then keep falling, fall right through the floor and then the floor below it and then the wine cellar and then the bedrock below the house and then the whole entire Earth and out the other side, because hitting the ground seems like it'd be too much effort.

Penelope stretches up on her tiptoes to kiss him, brings him a little way back to life, because the response to _that_ is just automatic, even if he tastes dirt, feels grit between her lips and his, and the soft little sound he makes when she pulls away might sound more like regret than pleasure. But maybe she doesn't notice, as her fingers curl around the back of his neck and she says again, "Shower, Gordon. I'll be back with tea."

She knows enough about him to give him a little bit of a push towards the doubled French doors of her master bathroom, and yeah, he needs to be told to go. He stumbles a little, leaves a streak of black mud from the heel of the boots he should've taken off, but by this point _he's_ past caring, either. That didn't take long. Two, maybe three minutes and any semblance of his principles had just bled right out of him. Great.

God, it doesn't matter. All that matters is getting this stupid suit off and scouring all the dirt and the death off his skin and getting clean and warm and just getting rid of his stupid fucking blues for a while. Stop being Thunderbird Four. Stop being Gordon Tracy, even. Stop being human at all and just wash away with the water, drain away and leave nothing behind. Yeah. That'd be good. It's not gonna happen, but he can still try.

So, once he's through the bathroom doors, has them closed behind him, he leans against the wall and undoes the four thousand straps that keep his boots on his feet, and then levers them off. Strips off his gloves, flexes his fingers without them, feels all the stiffness and the hurt and the aching weight of everything that's passed through his hands. His fingers are sore enough that they're clumsy as he fumbles at his collar, find the zipper that curves down past the ridge of his collarbone, down along his ribcage, stops at his hip. He peels away neoprene all stiff with mud. Thick, dark grey, awful stuff that's more clay than dirt, tenacious as it coats and clings.

His suit's tight. Maybe it's starting to get a little too tight, maybe he's gone and bulked up again, gotten a little broader across the shoulders, more muscular in the chest. He'll need to get Brains to look at it, or—no, just scrap it. Just cut the damn thing off, shred it to ribbons, get rid of it. He's done with that right now, he doesn't have to be _that guy_ when he's here. He pulls his arms free, the cuffs of his sleeves slipping off like shackles. That's always the hard part, and it's past, and when he shimmies his uniform off over the ridges of his hipbones, he almost, _almost_ feels like he's come free of it all.

There's a full length mirror that runs the length of Penelope's bathroom, because Penelope's bathroom is also her dressing room, and there's a walk-in closet big enough to house Pod A or B, if Penelope hadn't stuffed it full of a few hundred thousand dollars worth of couture and then about that again in shoes. There's a chaise in the corner. There's the bathrobe Pen had mentioned, hanging in a little alcove just around the corner from the shower, and that pile of towels, so dense and fluffy that they're nearly as tall as he is, standing stacked on the counter. There's a crystal chandelier and a glass walled shower; a bathtub in the corner that's more than big enough for two people (and a small, enthusiastic pug who doesn't know when he is _not wanted_ ). But the mirror is the thing that dominates the space, doubles the entire room over again, all gleaming white marble and gold fixtures.

And Gordon, pale and bruised and tired, with that crumpled heap of sullied IR blue at his feet, looking wrong and out of place and _ugly_ in the middle of it all, against all the soft white and gold. And somehow _still_ filthy, where liquid mud has crept beneath his blues, left smudges and stains on his skin, mingling with blood and sweat and tears.

The blood and sweat he'd expected. The tears are a bit of a surprise.

He wonders when that started up. Wonders if Penny noticed, and hopes not. The tears are only just barely there, and _he_ wouldn't have noticed at all either, if it weren't for the mud on his face, and the salt water tracks cut through it.

He's not even _upset_ really. Just tired. Just really, really goddamned fucking tired.

Shower time.

Pen's right, he'll feel better. He always feels better at the end of the day when he hits the showers, and this is a hell of a shower to hit. Penelope doesn't screw around in the bathing department, there are like six showerheads in the damn thing. At the moment he only wants the one of them hangs right over the center and lets water fall just exactly like rain. Warm, clean, clear water that doesn't pound on the top of his head or batter his aching body any worse (TB2's shower is a particularly terrible offender, because Virgil's beefed up the water pressure, seems to believe that when people hit the showers, the showers should hit _back_ , and that dirt needs to be _beaten_ off people), but just falls gentle and slow and does what water does best.

The best thing is watching all that grey wash away. He has to keep a hand on the wall to keep himself steady, but watching all the dirt swirl down the drain is improving his mood by leaps and bounds. Watching the water start to run clean again might just bring a few more tears along with it. Today was awful, but today is _over_. And he's done, John's pulled him off the roster for a solid weekend of downtime, and he gets to spend it _here_ , with Penelope. It's not even five in the evening yet, and so, okay, maybe he's not up to much, but he can manage an evening curled up on the couch or in the library, and they can watch some terrible sappy old movie or play chess or checkers or cards. Pen's only okay at chess, but he's been teaching her, and she's getting better. She's already _fantastic_ at cards, and that's the kind of ass-kicking he could go for, after having his ass kicked by a day like today.

The heat and the white noise are making him drowsy, and he's only just decided that he doesn't want to be. Pen's here and he's been all zonked out of his skull up til now, he doesn't want to waste any time with her. Even if it's only a few more hours of daylight, Gordon can pull a grin back onto his face and they can go sit down in her big enormous dining room and have a proper dinner. Candlelight and fine china and silverware and crystal and he's too hungry to even care what they eat. And hey, maybe a glass of wine, and _hell_ , he's off the roster, maybe _two_. Something to wash away what's messing him up on the inside just as well as what's on the outside, or at least take the edges off it.

That's worth perking up for. That's worth swapping all the hazy, cozy warmth for a bright shock of ice water. That's worth waking himself up, shaking himself out of it. He reaches out and turns the tap on the wall from hot to blood-freezing cold.

The vertigo hits just as he pushes away from the wall, breath hissing through his teeth as he jumps back from the fall of icy could. The jolt of the temperature change _would_ have been enough to jerk him awake, but it hits too late. In the backswing of that swooping rush of dizziness, his knees buckle and Gordon drops straight down, boneless, and cracks his head on the gleaming white tiles.


	2. Chapter 2

The tea tray weighs nearly ten pounds, because it's solid silver. And then it weighs at least that _again_ with all the food she's stacked up on it, two helpings of shepherd's pie and a loaf of crusty bread and a crock of butter, and a carafe full of water. She's sent the cook down to the wine cellar to find something half decent to go with the meal, though she's not sure if Gordon's in the mood for a proper drink. She's not sure if Gordon's going to stay upright long enough to eat _at all_.

She's not sure she's ever seen Gordon this tired before.

Actually, she's not sure if _anyone's_ ever seen Gordon this tired before, because she'd heard it first from Virgil, and then she'd heard it from Scott, and when her compact had chimed a _third time_ , somehow she'd known even before answering it that she was going to hear it again from John.

So, they're worried.

It's a bit of a hard switch from the usual refrain of "Don't worry about Gordon" over to "All right, maybe worry a _little_ about Gordon". And if anything, Penelope's irritated with them for not having the sense to worry sooner—for not knowing about just how much _effort_ goes into being cheerful and positive and summery bright, and knowing when other people expect you to smile and nod and carry on, and then _doing so_ , without fault or fail.

Penelope's only ever had to smile through the adversity of tedious state dinners and charity galas, through the company of boorish ambassadors or the boredom of keeping company with the aristocracy. She's seen _Gordon_ smile in the face of hurricanes and earthquakes and forest fires that tower into the sky and pour black smoke across cerulean blue, just the same way ash smudges black over his uniform. She's _seen_ him work, alongside his brothers, and she's seen Scott's jaw go all taut and Virgil's shoulders set like stone. She's seen John's eyes get sad, even as the rest of him remains disconnected and dispassionate in dispatch. She's seen Alan, looking far, far too young for the sort of things they ask of him.

And she's seen Gordon, looking around at the rest of them and cracking that sunshine grin, even when the world around him is going all to pieces, and his brothers along with it, because hey, someone has to be that guy.

So, really, " _look after him_ " is the very least Virgil could have asked her to do. A part of Penelope is reformatting that request, making additions and addenda. _Look after him. Take care of him. Be kind to him. Don't let us have him back, because we know exactly what he is and we all bloody well take advantage._

That last bit may not have been the way Virgil would have put it, strictly speaking, but Penelope's angry and she doesn't care.

Keeps her mind off the weight of the tray, anyway, and gives her that much more power and purpose as she storms to the top of the stairs. Anger is good, anyway. Anger is energy that she can redirect, so often so many of her own smiles are fueled by a core of pure, molten fury.

Penelope reaches the top of the stairs with a sigh that vents her frustration. She straightens her back and sets her shoulders, and swathes her anger up in kindness and softness and gentle care. Lets it be the place where the warmth bleeds from, rather than using it to call up John or Scott and scorch one or the other or the _both_ of them with searing, blistering rhetoric, for pushing their brother as hard as they do.

Although, she knows Gordon well enough to know that it's at least partially his own stupid fault, for letting them; for _not_ letting them know when he's worn out and exhausted, right up until the very last minute, when it becomes obvious that he's just barely still standing.

The reasons don't really matter as much as the reality, which is that he's here and he's exhausted and it's fallen to her to help fix that.

So she pushes her bedroom door open and carries her tray over to the intimate little corner of the room, by the window overlooking the grounds. There's a table and two chairs and a fresh bouquet of flowers, bright roses cut from the greenhouse in shades of deep red and autumn gold, to brighten the dreary English November. The sunset outside the window is just beginning to soften the blue of the sky, and they can watch it together. She can still hear the shower running in the bathroom, but it's not until she turns that she notices the water, seeping beneath the bathroom doors.

It's the sort of curious wrongness that doesn't immediately spark into fear. It's just something strange and out of place, right at first, something she doesn't expect and can't immediately explain. She's puzzled, perhaps a little concerned, as she crosses the room and pushes open one of the doors to her bathroom.

There's the slightest resistance against the shallow spread of water covering the floor, and the swing of the door sends a wave cresting across the surface, ripples through the room.

Puzzled bemusement cedes to confusion, and to then that single permissible second of heartstopping terror, before years' worth of hardwired training take over, and situational awareness takes in the room at a glance.

Water on the floor, going all muddy gray where it laps against the blue uniform in the middle of the room. Water, icy at her feet, soaking through the bottoms of her socks as she steps inside. Water, still running, falling like rain and _freezing_ cold, blocked from draining away by the body crumpled on the tile floor of the shower, overflowing the hard marble tile at the edges of the shower pan. Water, with red threading through it, blooming like the roses on the table in the room behind her, and staining his golden-blond hair where it bleeds from his scalp.

Gordon's always telling her; you don't need more than an inch or so of water, in the right circumstances, to drown.

And for a moment she loses all her careful, measured control, because for a moment she's certain that he's dead. Just dead. She stepped away for what seems like barely any time at all, and she's come back to find him gone. For the space of a moment she blames herself, knows too late that she never should have left him. As weak and weary as he was, she should have known to stay. Should have added up all the little cues; the glassiness of his eyes and the heaviness of his limbs and the tears she'd pretended not to see. Instead it had all added up to an excuse she'd given herself to step away for a little while, to give him time to pull himself back together and clean himself up, because if there's one thing Gordon _hates_ , it's when people see him break.

Only, why else would he be here, if not because it's somewhere safe to fall apart? Who is she, if not the person who's meant to be there when he does; the person he trusts to know when he can't go any further, needs someone else to help him hold all the pieces together?

And why the hell hasn't she been able to do anything but shriek and collapse to her knees, when it's not useful in the _least_ ; when he's clearly _hurt_ and endangered and certainly supposed to be harder to kill than _this_.

She's watched him smile into the teeth of screaming wind and roaring fire and the full, towering force of the sea unleashed; Gordon Cooper Tracy is absolutely _not_ dead, nor is he going to die on the floor of her bathroom in the north of England, after having spent the past eighteen hours saving lives on the other side of the globe.

It's the sheer absurdity of it all that galvanizes her back into motion, pulls her back to her feet and the rest of the way across the room to haul the shower door open, her heart in her throat as she drops to her knees on the flooded shower floor. She can't tell if she's shaking with fear or the _cold_ , as her hands slip against Gordon's skin, shoving him off his chest and onto his side, and clear of the shower drain. In the same moment that there's a guttering, hollow sputter of suction of water into the drain, she hears him cough, feels him shift slightly and stir.

And Penelope just about crumbles with relief, even as Parker appears in the doorway.


	3. Chapter 3

Her Ladyship doesn't _scream_.

Just, as a general rule, you couldn't ruffle the Lady Penelope's feathers if you hit her with a brick. Only, you'd be unlikely to have the chance to hit her with a brick to begin with, trained as she is in a variety of unarmed modes of combat. More than likely, her ladyship would make you regret bringing a brick to a fist fight in the first place.

Probably by taking the brick off you, dropping it into her handbag, and cheerfully beating you into insensibility with it.

Parker's quite proud of the hand he's had in her ladyship's general air of unrufflability, but when there's a panicked, frightened shriek from the second floor, he's still on his feet, out of the parlor, and up the stairs faster than would be expected for a man of his age.

Because her ladyship _doesn't_ scream.

—but there's no one else upstairs who could possibly be responsible for the sound of pure pain and terror, the like of which Parker hasn't heard since he'd been on the ground during the worst days of the war.

The household's present company considered, there's a small, rather prudish part of Parker that's not exactly eager to burst through her ladyship's bedroom door and find out just what on earth the screaming is about—but the greater part of him knows that there must be something terribly wrong, and never mind what goes on behind closed doors in m'lady's private chambers, he'd batter down the gates of hell if Penelope were in need on the other side of them.

She's not in the bedroom, but the bathroom doors have been flung open, and there's a flood of water gleaming on the tiled marble floor, reflecting back all the light in the room as he reaches the threshold and peers in.

Bloody black buggerin' _hell_.

Or, well, bloody hell, at the very least. And blue, more probably, rather than black.

Earlier in the year, making the usual friendly calls around to members of his old unit, Parker had been shocked to learn that his old sergeant had slipped in the shower and broken his hip. The quintessential old-man-injury had befallen a man not five years Parker's senior, and though Parker can still sprint up a flight of stairs at utmost need, the news had still struck a bit of a sour chord, and had him rather sullenly order an extra round or two at the pub that night.

Perhaps there's something like comfort to be taken in the notion that the exact same mishap can befall a former Olympian, less than half Parker's age and in the best shape of his life, but Parker can't find the heart to look for it. Especially as the Lady Penelope is quite fond of this particular former Olympian, and the poor bastard's currently limp as a dead kitten, naked and shivering in her ladyship's arms. He's bleeding all over her dress where his forehead rests against her shoulder, red painting over the places where he's not gone pale and blue from cold.

Parker has a whole library of uncharitable remarks, ready and waiting to be made at Gordon Tracy's expense, with regards to his height, his blondness, his general level of intelligence, his bloody great _cheek_ , and even, rather hypocritically, the fact that the boy's got a crookedy damn nose. It's part of his job, Parker's long decided, to keep her ladyship's suitors firmly on the backfoot, and his insistent presence as a lurking force of disdain and barely-below-the-surface hostility generally helps to weed out the worst of the bastards who hang around Lady Penelope with less than noble intentions.

There's nothing like _actual_ animosity, though, and especially not where Gordon's considered. The lad's always given just as good as he gets, in any case, and Parker counts that broadly in his favour.

And so there's nothing but genuine concern, nothing but urgency in the way he crosses the room, takes in the pair of them at a glance, and murmurs, "Good 'eavens, m'lady, but he doesn't 'alf bloody well step in it when he goes and does so, eh?"

"Oh, _Parker_ —" Penelope's soaked to the skin, shivering herself, and plainly, obviously distressed. Her blue eyes have that rare glimmer of tears and when she looks up at her bodyguard and partner, it's with such an unlikely air of helplessness that his heart just about breaks.

So Parker takes charge. The best thing to do with her ladyship in these vanishingly infrequent instances of weakness is to give her a clear and useful directive and to get her _out of the way_. "There now, m'lady, I've got 'im. We'll get this lot sorted out, and lucky he's got such a thick skull on 'im, eh? Go and fetch the first aid kit now, there's a good lass. Stop clinging like a limpet, my girl, doin' no one any kind of good."

When Parker stops talking like she's _her ladyship_ and starts talking like she's the child he's known from girlhood, that's when one can tell she's afraid. Still, Penelope nods and shifts slightly, permits Parker to reach down and get ahold of Gordon, to pull him upright and start to get him sorted out.

They're more or less of a size, Gordon and Parker, and if the younger of the pair is possessed of a solid base of the lean, lithe muscularity of youth, then Parker's at least his equal in a spry, wiry bedrock of the colloquial old man strength. It's not a question of much exertion to haul Gordon Tracy off the floor, even if he _is_ shivering almost too badly to hold steady and only semi-conscious, and mostly represents a hundred and sixty odd pounds of dead-weight. There's a chaise in the corner of the room opposite the shower, and it's as good a place as any to sit him down, such as to get a proper look at the boy. There's a towel across the backrest, and Parker prudently drops this across Gordon's lap, while his other hand stays steady on the lad's shoulder, props him upright even as he starts to come back around. Blood from where he's split the skin at his temple is still slick and sticky down the side of his face, diluted by the water that still clings to his skin.

Pathetic bloody creature. Parker's of the opinion, and not incorrectly, that the Tracys as a collective are astonishingly durable. When dropped, they tend to bounce. But it's clear that Gordon was in a right state to begin with, and is that much worse off now. At his elbow, Lady Penelope makes the sort of tiny, barely there little whimper of pain and fear and empathy, the sort that betrays her when she's really and truly rattled. And likely to be dreadfully underfoot and bothersome and just generally in the way.

She's one of the most competent people one could hope for, if one needs a right blaggard or a dastardly villain beaten about the head with a brick stuffed in a handbag. As international agents go, she's as cool and calm and confident as they come. Parker's helped her chase Luddite terrorists through London, taught her to crack a safe, and had her voice in his ear, sure and determined, telling him to unload missiles in the direction of a hostile, patched together hulk of a submarine, a dozen times the size of FAB1.

But when the people nearest and dearest to her come to harm, Penelope goes a little bit all to pieces.

"First aid kit, _please_ , m'lady," Parker says again, a bit more firmly this time, because her ladyship _does_ tend to dither when she's been badly frightened. He gentles his tone, alternating out of sternness as though he's coaxing a small and timorous beastie into action. "Go right on, and then get yourself out of that soppin' wet lot. Doin' no one any good drippin' all over the carpet, catch your bloomin' death. H'and best you go turn down the blankets in one of the spare rooms, it's a right proper mess in yours. Go on now, m'lady, get off with you. We'll be right through."

"Oh, but—"

" _M'lady._ "

It's to her credit that she doesn't need to be told a third time, though Parker's fairly sure she'll be back sooner than he wants her.

Still. Matter at hand. Parker squares his palm against Gordon's shoulder and catches the lad's jaw with his other hand, tilts his head up to get a better look at him. Glassy brown eyes blink open but don't quite focus, and Parker tuts disapprovingly at the place where his forehead's going to bruise, around the edges of a gash in the skin. Poor bastard.

"Well now," he comments with a sigh, "you do love to make a bleedin' great mess of things whenever you turn up, Master Gordon, but I think this time around just h'about tears it. Gone and made 'er ladyship _cry_ , you poor bloody fool. Better get you sorted out."


	4. Chapter 4

Everything was awful and then it got a little bit better and now it's all much, much worse.

Ow.

Only, no, because _ow_ doesn't even touch how badly he hurts right now, how far beyond pain this goes. It's just the cherry on top of a day like today, after a week like this week, and the longest November of Gordon's entire life. There's the temptation to call today a perfect storm, but Gordon knows enough about storms to know that each and every one of them is perfect in its own special way.

And there's nothing really all that special about today. 

There's nothing new or unique or rare or unpredictable about being this tired, after a day like today. There's nothing but mundanity in all the death he's seen this week, numbers that climb up out of tragedy and into the territory of statistic. There's nothing out of the ordinary about another bad day in a _month_ of bad days.

These are the things he'd think about, if he hadn't just cracked his skull off the marble tiles of Penelope's shower floor, hadn't halfway drowned himself, and hadn't just woken up shivering bodily and in the onset of hypothermia, with Penelope looking down at him, stricken and terrified.

So right now, all Gordon's really capable of getting a handle on is the fact that he's cold, and that the only point of warmth in the whole entire world is the hand that's clasping his shoulder, while his whole body shakes and his teeth start to chatter, in such a way that makes the pain in his head so much the worse. It seems to take an enormous amount of effort to lift his head and meet Parker's worried gaze.

"Easy, lad," Parker says softly, and then he says something else that sounds like it's coming from underwater, and then, "There now, let me have a look—" Blunt, calloused fingertips get hold of his jaw, tilt his head to the side, and Parker sucks a disapproving breath through his teeth, but his voice is chipper, falsely positive as he says, "H'ugly as sin, but not too bad. Looks a fright, though, gave 'er ladyship quite a scare. Can you sit tight a minute without keeling over?"

He doesn't think he can nod, but his teeth are chattering too badly to try and get words past them. He's sat at the edge of the plush divan in the corner of the bathroom, both his hands clinging to the edge of it, and he knows if he lets go, he'll fall again. Gordon's not sure if he'll get back up, if he falls again. So he manages to mumble something that hopefully sounds vaguely affirmative, and intends to stay put.

Parker's hand squeezes his shoulder and then carefully lets go, though he lingers for a few moments in the immediate vicinity, as though he hasn't taken Gordon at his word. Probably wise. "There now. Won't be a tick. You just stay right where you're put, Master Gordon."

Parker's boots splash across the bathroom floor, and Gordon closes his eyes against the brightness of white and gold, glaring at him off the sheen of water. The shivering hasn't stopped and he doesn't know if he's ever going to be warm again. When Parker comes and wraps a robe around his shoulders, it doesn't seem to make the barest bit of difference. When Parker presses a damp hand towel against his left temple, Gordon can see out the corner of his eye that it comes away bloody. When the older man curses softly and pulls him abruptly into a rough sort of hug, he realizes it's because he's just started crying again, and he's just the second person to catch on.

He's not sure why the hell that's happening. It's not like he's actually upset, his _head_ just hurts.

He'd kind of prefer for Parker to go back to off the cuff insults and general disdain. That's what Parker's _for_ , that's his function. It's not that Gordon thinks Parker doesn't care, it's just that he's not supposed to _seem_ as though he does. It's kind of hard, when presented with a shoulder to cry on, not to default into crying on it.

* * *

Whatever Parker's for, there's no two ways around the fact that he's direct about achieving his aims. If Gordon were a little less out of it, he'd be impressed by the older man's efficiency. He might even have taken the time to say so.

Instead, he gets put to bed. Pen puts in an appearance for what seems like only a few moments, before Parker shoos her away and Gordon gets annoyed with him. There's a hazy stretch of time during which Parker is by turns kind and brusque, performing some fairly basic first-aid and a light scolding, and then helping Gordon dry off and providing him with a pair of pajamas. By the time he finds himself folded into a four-poster bed in one of the manor's many guest rooms, the sun's already going down outside. The room is all high ceilings and deep blue shadows, but the space is cast in red by the light of the sunset. Part of his brain automatically recites the rhyme that goes with the phenomneon— _Red sky at night, sailor's delight._

So tomorrow should be better.

Except he doesn't think it will be.

But he doesn't want to think about that.

And he's spared from doing so, because Penelope's come back. It seems like for keeps this time, because the blankets on the other side of the bed get turned down, and there's the rustle of soft cotton sheets and the shuffle of her limbs as she slips beneath them. There's something odd about that, and it takes him a minute to remember just how early it still is. 

It's kind of ridiculous, that she'd be here. It's not even properly nighttime yet. Penelope's a creature of darkness more than she is a creature of daylight. This is usually the part of the day where she really starts to come alive. Not that he's complaining. And not that he wants her to go, just that this isn't where she _would_ be, if he hadn't come stumbling across her threshold, hauling all of his damage and also a not insubstantial quantity of Peruvian mudslide. 

But she's here, anyway, regardless of where she might be otherwise.

And then her fingertips ghost gently across his lips and he realizes he hasn't opened his eyes.

When he does, the first thing he sees is just that she's crying. In an awful, silent way, with tears brimming in her eyes that fall loose when she blinks and trace along the paths where tears have fallen before, because she just can't help it. When Pen cries, at least in public, it's usually a tight, restrained little burst of theatrics. She'll tear up and then sniffle and then make a show of daubing at her eyes and taking a deep breath and mastering herself. Half the act of Penny showing emotion is in the pageantry of covering it up.

This is different. This is the sort of genuine, actual distress that Gordon's never actually seen from her before, but which represents the _I'm sad because you're sad_ state of being that he tries so hard not to ever be the source of. 

So there's nothing to do but reach out and pull her closer, not that she needs much more than the suggestion of an invitation before she nestles insistently against his chest, fits herself into the place where she belongs.

And usually she's the one with the icy hands and feet, but he's still cold through his core, and so she's warm and the weight of her against his aching torso is surprisingly more like comfort than it is like pain. And her hair still smells amazing as he tangles his fingers through it. She's changed out of her pretty dress and into something soft and smooth and yielding and probably still pretty, but he can't see it, can only feel the press of her body _through it_ , which is better, anyway.

This is the part of the script where he tells her it's okay, wraps her up that much tighter and closer and revels in the privilege of being one of the only people in Penny's life to be permitted to see such a vulnerable side of her. Because it _is_ a privilege, even if he can feel tears soaking through the fabric of his t-shirt, to be allowed this close. No one gets this close to Penny and he's lucky and he knows it, and the least he can do is try and make her feel better.

So it _should_ be " _Hey, it's okay, I'm okay _" or "_ C'mon, Pen, don't cry_". He should crack some stupid joke and get a watery giggle out of her, he should kiss her forehead and then her nose and just work his way down, give them both something else to think about. That's what he's supposed to do, that's what he's _for_.

Except—

It's a privilege to be here. He's lucky to be this close to her. And she's sad because he is, and they both know it, and keeping up the song and dance around pretending he's okay is _exhausting_. It's half the reason Gordon's landed here in the first place, literally and figuratively. There's a reason that Virgil had made a detour of a few thousand miles and dropped him off, left him in Penny's company, presumably with the hope that Pen would make everything better.

It was a bad day from the beginning and then it got worse, and he knows he isn't going to change the fact by lying or trying to pretend that anything else is true. So—

"I had a bad day." Quietly, like he's telling her some big secret, as though it's not obvious. As though she needs to be told, when obviously she doesn't, because she'd known from the first moment his boots had hit the ground, down from TB2's cockpit. 

Penny nuzzles closer and sighs, and her voice is soft and sad when she says. "I know, darling."

She doesn't, actually. He hopes she never has to. He still can't help but repeat himself, in a voice that's smaller and more broken than he wants it to be, "I mean it was a really, _really_ bad day."

She finds some way to cuddle even closer, presses a kiss against his throat and murmurs, "Dearheart, I can't even imagine."

He laughs at that, weakly, just the tiniest bit, because it's a reflex and because he sure as hell hopes not. He's peripherally aware of the fact that she keeps tabs on where he is in the world and what he's doing, but he hopes that she doesn't think about it too much. The less overlap there is between the worst parts of his job and her, the better. "Good. Don't try."

"If you wanted to talk about it..." She makes the suggestion gently, but trails off, seems to know better. "Later, maybe. You should sleep, my love. I think it would help."

She's probably right about that. As the warmth creeps in, he's less and less able to keep up anything like a conversation, starting to want nothing more than just to sleep. "M'tired." And his head hurts and he's still kinda cold, though between Pen and the heap of blankets he's been buried under, this is finally starting to ease. 

"Of course you are. Shhh, darling. Sleep."

The red's still fading from the sky as he closes his eyes again, and he falls asleep with her fingertips brushing through his hair, and her hand holding his.

Maybe things will look better in the morning.


End file.
